It's been a busy two months as the report below shows. The highlight was a Memorial Day weekend visit to Chicago to see Dave and Megan. Being main players in the urban agriculture scene, they were extremely busy with everything from arugula to weeding.
Salad! An Heirloom Tomato Joins the Lettuce
Megan and Dave manage several gardens, including this one, which is their own. At a housing project, we inspected the chickens and cabbages he's raising for the residents. On the day we visited five of the six chickens had contributed an egg.
News & Notes
We spent April in Berlin. We toured the sights of this historic city, and joined Berliners at many of the concerts that feed their serious music addiction. (See postcards for more of the story.) Most interesting to us was how the city has moved past its dark 20th century history and become an exciting world capital. Many memorials acknowledge the events of that past, of course, but Berlin has moved on.
Marker of the line of the Berlin Wall through the unified city
In Chicago we made our usual visit to the Art Institute, this time to see the newly cleaned and restored Paris Street, Rainy Day, by Gustave Caillebotte. It is stunning! Among the improvements, the old varnish was painstakingly lifted off, making the day feel much brighter, as Caillebotte obviously intended. It also revealed detail, such as the lady's diamond earring, which appeared before to be a pearl. And now for the quiz: Can you locate the two halves of the carriage?
Paris Street, Rainy Day
Another masterpiece that really caught our attention this time was Gaston La Touche's Pardon in Brittany. Everything about this painting is marvelous -- the subject (which is a ceremony of forgiveness), the traditional white hats, the composition, the subtlety of La Touche's technique, etc. It, too, must be viewed in person to be fully appreciated.
Pardon in Brittany
Also on the art front, one of our favorite Chicago galleries is run by Project Onward, an agency helping adults with disabilities to work productively as artists. An important benefit of drawing and painting for people with autism, for example, is it allows them to express themselves, and deal with the chaos that often fills their minds. The resulting artwork is fascinating. Our lastest acquisition is by Stephon Doby, titled This Is What We Live For: Vancouver. He added the subtitle: "It's not competition. It's just teenage life."
This Is What We Live For: Vancouver
We also squeezed in a visit with our longtime friends Beth and Dale Marcus at their lovely home in Highland Park. It is always a joy to catch-up with the Marcuses.
In May our friend Art Harano was specially recognized for his Army service in Vietnam at a Welcome Home Ceremony (the first!) sponsored by the Nisei Veterans Foundation. It was inspiring to listen as our extremely modest friend was honored by the military.
Again this year we went to Montana to help Jim and Julie Shadle support the STOKR (Scenic Tour of the Kootenai River) Bicycle Ride for Habitat for Humanity. Our friends Judy Watson and Larry Bunn rode, and Larry made it to our Pipe Creek Summit checkpoint, elevation 4000'! Judy was there to greet him as she helped us pass out snacks; they both rode the next day as the tour continued. It was a lovely weekend for cycling, everyone had a good time and the charity won.
Mr. Bunn Arriving At The Summit
We spent two days beach combing on Washington's Pacific Coast. We were interested in what sorts of things have floated in from Japan's 2011 tsunami. We found everything from food wrappers to fishing floats. But as always, we mostly found local Pacific Coast driftwood of various sizes.
J Looking For Interesting Driftwood
